The Washington Sun’s aggressive local marketing campaign swings at The Post

For 25 years, Washington Post food critic Tom Sietsema went out of his way to keep his identity a secret. But these days, his visage is plastered all over social media as part of an aggressive advertising blitz for his new employers at the Washington Sun.

In addition to running ads featuring some of their prominent local hires, the Sun has also started advertising on Metro trains, hanging banners at Union Station, and even serving free coffee at various spots around town. One of those locations: across the street from the Post’s downtown headquarters.

The freshly rebranded news organization (previously known as NOTUS) rapidly expanded its efforts in the wake of the Post’s massive layoffs earlier this year. It hired more than two dozen of its former staffers, including Sietsema, Michael Brice-Saddler, and Jenny Gathright on the local beat and prominent names covering national politics, such as Dana Milbank, Paul Kane, and Jeff Stein.

It has also inked a deal with the popular Capital Weather Gang, which left the Post earlier this year, to provide local weather news. And last week, The Sun launched a print edition led by – you guessed it – two former editors of The Washington Post magazine.    

Media watchers around D.C. have been pleasantly surprised at the outlet’s decision to not only invest in metro coverage but make it a huge part of its marketing efforts. Many see it as the clearest proof yet that the Sun is not only hoping to challenge the Post’s dominance of national political news, but also try to claim its mantle as the premier news organization “for and about Washington.” (The outlet says its newsroom has grown to over 100, including more than a dozen on the combined metro/sports team.)

“There's nothing that will benefit us more than an old-fashioned newspaper war,” says Robert McCartney, who spent nearly 40 years at the Post as a local editor and columnist before retiring in 2021. “It's just been a desert when it comes to local coverage, and I'm very pleased to see somebody step in.”

For his part, Sun chief of staff Justin Peligri says this round of advertising isn’t about heightening any conflict with the Post. He notes that the Sun is already working with other news organizations in the region (including a partnership with FOX 5, WTOP, and NBC Washington to cover high school sports), and he views the Sun as simply one part of a healthy news ecosystem.

“A little friendly competition is great, and we welcome as many different media organizations as possible to be our competitors,” Peligri said, noting he’s also rooting for your friends here at The 51st. “We want to send the message that we're part of the community and we want to hear from the community, engage in dialogue with them.”

But then again, the Sun did park a van outside the Post with a billboard that read “better news is coming” earlier this year.  

Vince Morris, a PR consultant and former media columnist for Washington City Paper, says the subtext of the Sun’s local focus is pretty clear. “Everybody has noticed how little local coverage [the Post] was doing over the last three years, so this is the right time to pick up subscribers,” he says. He also notes that the Sun’s publisher, billionaire Robert Albritton, has had his sights set on building a true competitor to the Post for decades.

Morris believes it’s just smart business for the Sun to put prominent former Posties front and center. 

“There may be an element of sticking it in the eye of the Post, but a lot more of it is just investments in brand-name bylines,” Morris says. “Someone like Sietsema has been doing it for a generation. His name brings extra credibility to the Sun.”

Peligri agrees with that assessment, saying the ads are simply to “let people know these names they know are here now.” 

Natalie Hopkinson, a media professor at American University who is also active in local D.C. affairs, says the Sun’s focus on individual personalities is a bit old school, embracing the "archetypal shoeleather newspapermen.” 

“The new generation thinks of them as a fossil, if at all,” she says, but it’s an approach that she suspects will appeal to the sort of older readers the Sun may hope to peel away from the Post. Veteran reporters may be “imperfect, but they did good work,” Hopkinson says. “They had juice. They kicked ass and held people accountable. These are legacies to build on.” 

“Activations” like the coffee giveaway outside the Post’s HQ are aimed a bit more squarely at the younger set, and Peligri says there are more to come. The Sun has already rented a panel truck to drive around displaying former 51st reporter Martin Austermuhle's face — a move squarely targeted at those of us who are online enough or familiar enough with local news to know what he looks like — and Peligri hopes to get creative about other ways to reach readers going forward.

“We know that there's a huge hunger for local news, including local sports coverage, when a lot of that was going away at other outlets,” Peligri says. “We've seen that people are subscribing to the Washington Sun as a result, which tells us that local news is important and valuable to people and they're willing to pay for it.”

The Sun is indeed entering new territory as it begins charging for anyone hoping to access their offerings: $50 a year to start, and $100 annually after that. The paywall structure is similar to their competitors at the Post, and while Peligri declined to provide numbers, he says he’s been “extremely thrilled” by the response so far.

“We don't want to have a hard paywall where you can't read anything,” Peligri says, noting readers can still access the Sun’s newsletters and a few articles per month for free. “But we're very grateful to our community for being willing to pay for our news.”

McCartney counts himself among the Sun’s early subscribers. He’s thrilled about the Sun’s emphasis on local sports, finding it baffling that the Post would pull back from a coverage area that always drove demand from advertisers back when he was at the paper. But he wonders how the Sun will attempt to address the rest of the D.C. region: right now, the bulk of its coverage is devoted specifically to the District.

“The journalistic bias in favor of covering the District over the suburbs has bewildered me for decades,” McCartney says. “When I was the metro editor, the Post’s managing editor told me the suburbs were boring and they didn’t want to cover them. But that’s where the vast majority of our readers lived… I hope the Sun doesn't make that mistake.”

Peligri notes the Sun has made some moves to broaden its coverage, observing that Sietsema writes about restaurants around the DMV and that its high school sports writers will have a regional focus. But as for any future expansions, he says readers will have to “stay tuned as we make our plans for 2027.”

“My aspiration is that the Washington Sun is a brand name publication that is a go-to source for everybody who lives here,” Peligri says. “That it’s the first thing that they wake up in the morning and need to read in order to do their jobs and to get through their day, and I think we're well on our way to accomplishing that goal.”

McCartney hopes that the Sun’s success is the sort of thing that can goad the Post into action. He believes owner Jeff Bezos’ stated goal of becoming “the dominant source of news in the English language” is plainly not coming to fruition. Could a little friendly competition (and some pointed advertisements) change all that?

“I hope the Post rises to the challenge,” McCartney says. “But I'm afraid Bezos just doesn't care about the local market. He's interested in ruling the world.”

The Post, which has also slashed its PR department, did not respond to a request for comment.